one

views updated May 29 2018

one / wən/ • cardinal number the lowest cardinal number; half of two; 1: there's only room for one person two could live as cheaply as one one hundred miles World War One a one-bedroom apartment. (Roman numeral: i, I) ∎  a single person or thing, viewed as taking the place of a group: they would straggle home in ones and twos. ∎  single; just one as opposed to any more or to none at all (used for emphasis): her one concern is to save her daughter. ∎  denoting a particular item of a pair or number of items: electronics is one of his hobbies he put one hand over her shoulder and one around her waist a glass tube closed at one end. ∎  denoting a particular but unspecified occasion or period: one afternoon in late October. ∎  used before a name to denote a person who is not familiar or has not been previously mentioned; a certain: he worked as a clerk for one Mr. Ming. ∎ inf. a noteworthy example of (used for emphasis): the actor was one smart-mouthed troublemaker he was one hell of a snappy dresser. ∎  identical; the same: all types of training meet one common standard. ∎  identical and united; forming a unity: the two things are one and the same. ∎  one year old. ∎  one o'clock: it's half past one I'll be there at one. ∎ inf. a one-dollar bill. ∎ inf. an alcoholic drink: a cool one after a day on the water. ∎ inf. a joke or story: the one about the chicken farmer and the spaceship. ∎  a size of garment or other merchandise denoted by one. ∎  a domino or dice with one spot.• pron. 1. referring to a person or thing previously mentioned: her mood changed from one of moroseness to one of joy her best apron, the white one. ∎  used as the object of a verb or preposition to refer to any example of a noun previously mentioned or easily identified: they had to buy their own copies rather than waiting to borrow one do you want one?2. a person of a specified kind: you're the one who ruined her life Eleanor was never one to be trifled with my friends and loved ones. ∎  a person who is remarkable or extraordinary in some way: you never saw such a one for figures.3. [third person sing.] used to refer to any person as representing people in general: one must admire him for his willingness. ∎  referring to the speaker as representing people in general: one gets the impression that he is ahead.PHRASES: at one in agreement or harmony: they were completely at one with their environment.for one used to stress that the person named holds the specified view, even if no one else does: I for one am getting a little sick of writing about it.one after another (or the other) following one another in quick succession: one after another the buses drew up.one and all everyone: well done one and all!one and only unique; single (used for emphasis or as a designation of a celebrity): the title of his one and only book the one and only Muhammad Ali.one by one separately and in succession; singly.one day at a particular but unspecified time in the past or future: one day a boy started teasing Grady he would one day be a great president.one-for-one denoting or referring to a situation or arrangement in which one thing corresponds to or is exchanged for another: donations would be matched on a one-for-one basis with public revenues.one of a kind see kind1 .one-on-one (or one-to-one) denoting or referring to a situation in which two parties come into direct contact, opposition, or correspondence: maybe we should talk to them one-on-one.one or another (or the other) denoting or referring to a particular but unspecified one out of a set of items: not all instances fall neatly into one or another of these categories.one or two inf. a few: there are one or two signs worth watching for.one thing and another inf. used to cover various unspecified matters, events, or tasks: what with one thing and another she hadn't had much sleep recently.

One

views updated Jun 08 2018

ONE

ONE magazine was the premiere publication of the homophile movement. The first issue was published in January 1953 by a group of homosexual men and women in Los Angeles. The magazine witnessed changes in content, format, and editorial staff over the following fifteen years until it ceased publication in 1968 (although it reappeared briefly in 1972).

The beginning of ONE magazine is attributed to a group of women and men who participated in the Mattachine Foundation. The main activity of the foundation was sponsoring discussion groups in which gay men and some lesbians gathered to discuss a variety of issues of particular relevance to sex variance. A favorite topic of the discussion groups—and, ultimately, a key concern of the homophile movement overall—was the problem of communication. Participants in the discussion groups wondered how they might help distribute objective, nonjudgmental information about law, religion, and psychology as it related to homosexuality when the only avenue of communication available was the mainstream press, which in 1953 was interested in homosexuality only if the story was sensational. The resolution of this quandary seemed clear to several discussion group participants at a meeting in October 1952: publish a magazine in which homosexuals (and experts sympathetic to the cause of the homophile movement) could create a meaningful and influential counter discourse. Rather than start a magazine under the auspices of the Mattachine Foundation, which at the time was beginning to experience some internal problems, a group that included Dale Jennings, Don Slater, Martin Block, and Dorr Legg started the independent magazine ONE. The title of the magazine was derived from a Thomas Carlyle poem celebrating fraternity, which declared "a mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one."

Although ONE magazine was independent of the Mattachine Foundation, it was a project of ONE, Inc., which was founded simultaneously with the magazine in late 1952. Publications was only one of four "divisions" of

ONE, Inc.; the other three divisions were education, research, and social service. Although the magazine and the social services divisions were for the most part moribund by the early 1970s, the ONE Institute continues to exist in 2003 as an archive and research institute.

One of the reasons that ONE can be described as the premiere homophile magazine is that its standards were at a level somewhat higher (although inconsistently so) than its chief competitors in the 1950s and early 1960s: the Mattachine Review and the Ladder. ONE featured articles by respected writers like Norman Mailer, James Barr, and Donald Webster Cory; it regularly published the research findings of nonhomophobic psychologists like Evelyn Hooker and Blanche Baker; it contained numerous, detailed accounts of news related to homosexuals around the world, many of which were collected and excerpted by Jim Kepner; it was the one homophile publication to strive for a degree of balance (but never equality) between articles about male and female homosexuals; and it printed scores of essays that discussed the emerging gay culture from the perspective not of a lawyer or a psychologist but of an insider, a participant. Typical, for example, was the July 1958 article, "The Gay Beach," in which the reader is treated to a lively but reasonably realistic conversation between two gay men as they visit a gay beach in Southern California. Not only do the two men gossip and cruise, but they muse about the unfortunate divisions between homosexuals and heterosexuals as well as among homosexuals and they pine for a time when such divisions might be merely benign variations or preferences. In addition to mostly intelligent, often sensitive articles, ONE contained photographs and drawings that, while tame even by the standards of the 1950s and 1960s, celebrated the gay male body and hinted at the more controversial physique publications then in circulation. The magazine also included advertising for other homophile organizations and publications and occasionally for presumably gay-owned or managed businesses.

It was precisely this sort of content that attracted the attention of U.S. postal authorities in Los Angeles. The authorities had delayed the distribution of the August 1953 issue, but they confiscated the October 1954 issue, declaring it "obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy." With the future of the magazine (as well as other homophile publications) hanging in the balance, the editors of ONE appealed the action to the Federal District Court, the Ninth Court of Appeals, and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 13 January 1958 decision, the Supreme Court, without comment, overruled the decisions of the lower courts, thus making a de facto declaration that the issue of ONE in question was not obscene. In his book Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities, historian John D'Emilio describes this as the gay movement's "only significant victory during the 1950s" (p. 115).

Factionalism and personality conflict were features of the homophile movement from its very inception, but the ONE Institute and ONE magazine were at the center of one of the more sensational clashes, which has since come to be known as "The Heist." At the center of the conflict were Dorr Legg, who was the director of the institute and primarily interested in educational programs, and Don Slater, who was the editor of ONE. The quarrel was based on matters both ideological and personal, but was sufficiently contentious to drive Slater to an extreme action. Along with the help of a few supporters, in April 1965 Slater removed the contents of ONE's Los Angeles office to a separate location and subsequently named it the Homosexual Information Center. As a result, for a four-month period, between May and August 1965, two separate ONE magazines were published: Slater's breakaway edition and the official ONE Institute version, edited by Richard Conger. Slater's ONE died quickly, but the edition published by the ONE Institute did so more slowly, lasting until early 1968.

The reasons for the demise of ONE, however, have as much to do with internal battles as they do external developments. The world of homosexual publications changed by the middle 1960s. All-in-one journals such as ONE and the Mattachine Review were losing favor to more specialized publications such as Guy Strait's baroriented newspapers in San Francisco (including Citizen's News), gay-male lifestyle magazines like Clark Polak's Drum, and, soon, more politically oriented publications like the Los Angeles Advocate. As the gay world grew and diversified in the 1960s, so did the requirements of its print culture.

Bibliography

D'Emilio, John. Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940–1970, 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Hansen, Joseph. A Few Doors West of Hope: The Life and Times of Dauntless Don Slater. Los Angeles: Homosexual Information Center, 1998.

Kepner, Jim. Rough News—Daring Views: 1950s Pioneer Gay Press Journalism. New York: Haworth Press, 1998.

Legg, Dorr, ed. Homophile Studies in Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: ONE Institute Press, 1994.

Marcus, Eric. Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945–1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Streitmatter, Rodger. Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995.

Martin Meeker

see alsocensorship, obscenity, and pornography law and policy; homophile movement; homophile press; legg, dorr; mattachine society; one institute; pulp fiction: gay.

one

views updated May 18 2018

one one for sorrow; two for mirth; three for a wedding, four for a birth proverbial saying, mid 19th century, referring to the number of magpies seen at the same time.
one for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot, one to grow proverbial saying, mid 19th century, traditionally used when sowing seed, and enumerating the ways in which some of the crop will be lost leaving a proportion to germinate.
one nail drives out another proverbial saying, mid 13th century, meaning like will counter like (compare fight fire with fire). The same idea is found in ancient Greek in Aristotle's Politics, ‘one nail knocks out another, according to the proverb.’
One Nation a nation not divided by social inequality; in Britain in the 1990s, especially regarded as the objective of a branch of or movement within the Conservative Party, seen as originating in the paternalistic form of Toryism advocated by Benjamin Disraeli.

In 1950 a group of Conservative MPs, then in opposition, published under the title One Nation a pamphlet asserting their view of the necessity of greater commitment by their party to the social services; these ideas had great influence when the party returned to government in the following year.

In the 1990s, One Nation returned to prominence in the debate between the right and left wings of the Conservative Party on the effect of the Thatcherite policies of the 1980s.
one size does not fit all an assertion of individual requirements; the saying is recorded from the early 17th century. Earlier versions of it exist, and are based on the metaphor of different size shoes for different feet, e.g. from J. Bridges Defence of the Government of the Church of England (1587), ‘Diverse feet have diverse lastes. The shooe that will serve one, may wring another.’
the one that got away traditional angler's description of a large fish that just eluded capture, from the comment ‘you should have seen the one that got away.’
one year's seeding makes seven years' weeding proverbial saying, late 19th century; the allusion is to the danger of allowing weeds to grow and seed themselves.
when one door shuts, another opens proverbial saying, late 16th century, meaning that as one possible course of action is closed off, another opportunity offers.

See also one Englishman can beat three Frenchmen, one law for the rich, one of our aircraft is missing, one step at a time, one swallow does not make a summer, one wedding brings another, one white foot, buy him.

one

views updated May 21 2018

one OE. ān = OS. ēn (Du. een), (O)HG. ein, ON. einn, Goth. ains :- Gmc. *ainaz :- IE. *oinos, whence also OL. oinos, L. ūnus, OSl. inŭ other, Lith víenas, OIr. óen, óin; in other langs. with other suffixes, as Skr. éka- one, Gr. oî(f)os alone.